Our windy day continues! While we have a few millimeters of rain predicted for this evening, as I type this, I am hearing thunder rolling, and just saw a flash of lightning out my window!

Here’s hoping we don’t loose power while I’m working on this post! :-D

I have continued working on the section of lilac wood I’d experimented on earlier. I decided to try using the cutting tool on my Dremel to make the job go faster – if the Dremel was quiet enough not to disturb Beep Beep and her babies too much.

It was quiet enough, but… there were other issues.

The Dremel I have is not a particularly powerful one. Just a Walmart cheepie, really. Lilac is a surprisingly hard wood, and it was just too much for it!

I ended up stopping part way through my attempt to cut through the wood and finished with a hand saw.

You can see where the friction actually “burned” the wood as the blade ground to a halt!

So I did the rest using a carpenter’s saw, cutting the piece into slices. It took a while, but I eventually got into the rhythm of it, and things went fairly quickly. I cut slices off until I had exactly 3 1/2 inches left – the width of my miter box – to try something different.

It fit just right, and I was able to cut the piece into 4 lengthwise sections. Not as evenly as I would have liked, since it kept trying to roll on me, but that just adds to the interest!

Here are all the pieces I got out of the section of lilac wood.

I really like how the length wise cuts look.

Also… do you notice something about the pieces?

The next step was to take a wire brush to the edges to remove loose bits of bark and clean off any debris. As I worked, I kept noticing a soft spot in the middle of the slices. I finally stopped to take a closer look, and it turned out every round piece had it, as did the centre lengthwise cut.

I used a non-metal brush on them, and eventually decided to just poke at it with a very small screwdriver.

It was basically just wood dust and came right out.

So I cleaned out every disk. Some were small enough that I had to use a wire to clear them out, but every single disk now has a hole in the centre!

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I was even able to use the wire to push through the centre cut piece, then use a brush to clean up the open section.

Oh! That was a quick little storm, and I noticed some crazy orange light outside. I just dashed out to see a gorgeous double rainbow!

Also, I got rained on. *shiver*

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes.

Tomorrow, I hope to be able to get back to these and start sanding them smooth and giving them a light coat of oil.

I’m still not sure what I’ll be doing with them, but they’re going to look very pretty when they’re done.

Since all of these had the holes in them, I double checked the first two I’d done, so see if they had that soft spot, too. They did. Barely big enough to use a sewing needle to clean them out. So those two pieces now have tiny holes through them, too. The colourful rings in one of them looks very much like an eye, and now the “pupil” has a tiny hole you can see though. It’s kinda like those “fairy stones” you find at the beach, with natural holes in them. :-)

I like it!

For the size if these, I’m thinking they might make nice pendants. The rings of colour are so dramatic, I feel doing anything more than sanding and oiling them is unnecessary. A possible exception would be to perhaps put a glass bead or something like that into the ones with the larger holes.

What do you think?

The Re-Farmer